The first glimmer of awareness caused him to flex and wriggle his fingers. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and for a moment he thought his world had turned blue. He realised he was lying on his back, looking up at the sky. Following on from this realization, the next challenge he faced would be to sit up - and that would not be straightforward - he was wearing a spacesuit. When the size of this challenge sank in he was not inclined to do anything for a while, and he lay on his back looking upwards, with a feeling that he was floating through the depths of an endless cerulean Universe. A feeling of peacefulness descended. Eventually, however, this feeling faded away, and was replaced by the urge to survive, and to move on, and to discover. He had always been this way.
And so he began to rock backwards and forwards. As he did this he began to pick up momentum until he rocked himself to his feet. Following this he stumbled and swayed a couple of times as he almost over compensated and threatened to send himself back to square one. But eventually he felt his feet lodge themselves on the surface of whatever country he now stood upon, and he was able to take in his surroundings for the first time.
He stood upon a sandy landscape that stretched for miles around, and rippled like the ocean on a calm day, and was pockmarked with stones and boulders. A light breeze pushed against the fabric of his spacesuit, and on the horizon he could make out the shapes of hills and mountains that could not be discerned with real clarity, but instead appeared but as shadows; thus giving the impression that they were almost not really there, and that however much one tried to approach them these ephemeral peaks would never get any nearer.
But there was a feature of this landscape that appeared as very real. Without thinking he took a step towards it; and everything changed.
The deep blue sky disappeared as day turned to dusk; and he saw that above him the unsleeping stars and a crescent Moon shone forth. The stars and the moon highlighted two huge structures that he now looked towards, and the sudden change in the state of the world made them stand out even more starkly now against their impalpable background. It was difficult to make out whether he was looking at a pair of huge sculptures or two towers that had been worn away and shaped by the wind and erosion of centuries upon centuries, until they looked like the figures of people.
He walked towards them, and he found that the motion of his gait was smooth, swift and effortless; and it felt strangely like he was skating across the rippling sand towards the buildings or statues that grew in stature and size, and in doing so became more ominous as the moments passed. He quickly discovered that he did not have to think about the strange nature of his motion, but instead could give his attention to the structures that he approached, and the sounds that began to reach his ears.
If one were to take it that they were sculptures of people, then the people that these statues had been modeled upon had been bowed by troubles or toils, or the deep thoughts that they pondered, or perhaps a combination of all three. The figure on the left was perhaps the shorter of the two, and its figure was pockmarked with oblong openings that may have served as huge portals or windows in a castle. The figure on the right was slimmer, and its back was smoothly curved, and next to it was situated a ruined archway. Both figures cast long shadows, and both of them looked downwards - perhaps at the same spot - and vegetation grew about them and from them, and about their heads birds were flying.
At the same time he took in these details he could hear the wind blowing, though it sounded stronger than it felt to his encapsulated body. And voices could also be heard, that echoed in his consciousness. He could not quite make out the words that were spoken, but he had an impression that they had to be very profound.
He saw two people - real people - up ahead.
There was a man standing next to small boy who he took to be the man's son. With one hand the man held the boy's hand, with the other he waved and gestured towards the structures that drew ever closer. The man's lips were moving and, as he passed them, he wondered whether what the man was saying formed part of the echoing dialogue that took place in his ears and in his mind. It was difficult to tell. The traveler moved on.
Now he was beneath the structures themselves. Despite the limitations placed upon his movement by the spacesuit, he managed to briefly look upwards. From this position the faces of the figures looking down upon him were like oval voids of opaque darkness in the twilight, and were framed by the constellations that twinkled in the firmament.
He heard a ringing sound.
The sound was coming from the tower to his right, as he approached the two sculptures. He noticed both towers had doorways, and he moved towards the doorway from which the sound emanated. The ringing he heard was truncated and regular, and it struck him as both anachronistic - because it was so out of place in this strange world - and old fashioned, because it was the sound of a technology that was long outdated.
He entered the structure and saw that it was a bare, vaguely rounded enclosure featuring a spiral staircase that climbed the walls and disappeared into the darkness above. The only other feature inside the structure was a desk; and upon this desk there sat a ringing, antique telephone. Except it was not quite a telephone: because instead of a receiver, it had a lobster.
He looked at it, ringing, and resisted the urge to pick up the lobster and position the crustacean over his ear.
Who would do this? He wondered to himself; who would replace the receiver of a telephone with a lobster?
But there was someone. Yes, he realised - there was a man who would do such a thing ...
And then he had passed through the building, or sculpture, and out the other side; past ancient stone pillars steeped in greenery, and on to the wide expanse beyond.
The ringing faded, and a new sound reached him - it was the sound of singing. The voice he heard was pure, almost angelic, and he shivered inside his spacesuit when he considered what this might imply.
In the distance, he saw what looked like a young woman dancing in the twilight, and he realised it was she whose voice he could hear.
One part of him wanted to approach the woman and speak to her. But he did not, because the way she moved disturbed him, as did the sound of her voice, and her ephemeral substance which was like the hills and mountains behind her. It was with relief that he spotted another object out into the plains, and he made for that instead.
As he drew nearer to it, he saw this new object was a stripey red, purple and white deckchair for the seaside that faced away from the two huge structures shaped like people. He also saw it was occupied. When he reached the chair he found himself looking down at a middle-aged man who wore a loose fitting suit, and brandished a cane that he held upright on the sandy ground. He had black hair that was slicked back, but by far his most distinctive feature was his moustache, that stretched out on either side of his nose and ended in long, tapered points.
"Senor Dali," he whispered in disbelief.
Dali looked up and smiled. "Exactement!" he exclaimed. "And you are?"
"A traveler," Said the traveler.
"Ah, good!" Dali boomed with an approving nod. He did not seem to require any further explanation.
"This appears to be your world," the traveler observed.
"Yes!" agreed Dali, "Amazing is not it?"
"It certainly is," Said the traveler, "absolutely incredible, though I have no idea how I got here."
"Where were you before you got here?" Dali asked.
This question made the traveler stagger and raise his hand to his helmet, as the question from the surrealist triggered a flood of memories that threatened to saturate his mind. "I was traveling in space ..." he managed to say.
"You're a spaceman!" Dali exclaimed in wonder.
"I passed beyond the limits of the solar system;" the astronaut recalled, "the first human being to do so. But not long after I left the Heliopause behind my instruments picked up signals from a black hole. It had never been discovered, and by the time I knew it was there it was already too late. I remember being stretched and crushed and agony beyond anything I could imagine. I thought the end had come. And then I found myself here. "
He looked around the world of the man that sat in the deck chair before him. "It's feels so strange to recall where I was before now I'm here ..."
"The Persistence of Memory," Dali remarked.
"Ha! Yes," the traveler agreed with rueful nod.
They fell into a comfortable silence, and listened to the voices that whispered upon the wind.
"So," Dali said eventually, "this is your purgatory, do you think?"
"I guess it could be," mused the traveler, "Either that or they found a way to get me out of there, and this is some kind of coma dream."
"Or perhaps you fell into the black hole," offered Dali, "And while we speak your body is hovering at the event horizon of a singularity as the laws of physics and nature break down around you. And there you will stay; trapped in the moment of transition between life and death, until the end of time."
"I do not think I like the sound of that," said the astronaut unhappily.
"Gah!" Dali exclaimed with a careless wave, "You are an explorer - embrace it!"
"That's easier said than do -" the traveler began.
Without warning the ground shook; and Salvador Dali and clapped his hands with joy. "¡Los elefantes bonitos!" he called out, "My beautiful pachyderms!"
From out of nowhere a herd of huge creatures had appeared right before the two observers: a parade of gigantic elephants with impossibly long and spindly legs above which pale, floating obelisks stretched into the starlit sky. The multi-jointed limbs of the impossible animals lifted and dropped, propelling their great loads forward and causing mini-earthquakes when they crashed back to earth.
The traveler would have marveled and expressed joy at the appearance of another of Dali's creations that suddenly filled the expansive plain they looked out into, were it not for the fact that one of the elephants loomed above them, and he realised they were directly in its path.
"Shouldn't... er, shouldn't..." the astronaut stammered, trying to suppress the sudden panic that assailed him, "Shouldn't we think about getting out of the way?"
"Gah!" Dali exclaimed again dismissively above the din of the herd, "We are perfectly safe. They will not harm us!"
"They- they won't?" asked the traveler uncertainly.
"Actually I don't know," Dali chortled, "I sincerely hope not!" With that he burst out laughing, and then the monstrous pachyderm was upon them.
As they saw its massive foot descend towards them like an Imperial Walker, the astronaut shut his eyes tightly and mumbled to himself, "I wish I'd been an IT consultant ..."
And then his voice was drowned out by a series of fresh earthquakes, and the earsplitting trumpeting of the creatures as they communicated with one another.
For a few seconds his world was filled with darkness and noise and fear as his eyes remained shut tight, and he again waited for his end to come, and he whispered his invocations for a more mundane career.
It took a further few seconds to register that the sounds had faded somewhat.
The astronaut opened an eye. Then he opened the other. He turned to see the elephant that had walked over them already receding, its great spindly legs carrying the creature and its towering, levitating obelisk away from them in an ungainly but swift gait.
"See, what did I tell you?" laughed the surrealist. "That's a relief!"
"Well ..." Said the traveler, collecting himself, "I think I might go and see what's inside your other tower over there."
Dali approved of this idea. "The Archaeological Reminiscence? Yes, you should look! Go! Go and explore!"
The traveler nodded. "I will take my leave of you then," he said, "It was great to meet you, Senor Dali."
"Igualmente," replied the master fondly, "Fare thee well, spaceman."
"Thank you," said the traveler.
He turned back and made his way towards the human like structures that he now knew to be huge recreations of one of Dali's most famous artworks, his motion as he traveled still smooth and curiously dreamlike. He headed towards the slightly shorter and more "chunky" of the two figures. Inside the other structure he had found the lobster telephone. What would be in this one?
His answer came initially in the form of the sound of music. This was not part of the curious background noise he had encountered in this world, and it was not like the hypnotic singing of the dancing woman that had so haunted him. He realised as he drew close that this was another unexpected anachronism. It was psychedelic rock and roll!
The traveler entered the second structure, and again found himself in a roughly circular chamber that enclosed the the cavernous interior. Upon his entry the volume of the music increased: harmonizing electric guitars with sitars over which a Lennon-like voice was warbling imprecations of love and peace. He saw a translucent man whose entire being was a kaleidoscope of colours like a rainbow. The translucent man was dressed like a 1960s dropout, sitting cross legged and rotating slowly in midair. When the man saw the traveler his face lit up. "Hey dude," he called out, "are you an astronaut?"
"I am," replied the astronaut.
"That's totally fab!" exclaimed the hippy with glee, "How did you get here?"
"Fell into a black hole," Said the astronaut.
The hippy hooted and slapped his thigh. "That's the freakiest thing I've ever heard!"
"How about you? How did you get here?" the traveler asked.
"By a not so dangerous route," laughed the hippy "We were meditating with our guru in Nepal, ya know, and I took something to help me open my mind out a bit? One minute I'm sitting on a mountainside surrounded by yaks, and the next thing I know I'm here! It just blows my mind, man!
"But still," the hippy concluded wistfully, "I wish I'd been an astronaut ..."
"We both ended up in the same place," the astronaut pointed out.
"Hey yeah, that's true!" the hippy acknowledged joyfully, "Just think, the drugs do work after all!"
"They certainly do."
The traveler leaned back so he could view the winding staircase that climbed up to the structure. "Well," he announced vaguely, "I guess I'll walk up there and take a look at the sky ..."
"Great idea!" the hippy enthused, "Say hello to Lucy for me!"
"I will."
He began to ascend the stairs, and as he did so, the psychedelic sounds that accompanied his encounter with the sixties dropout faded, and the unworldy sounds of Dali's dreams reasserted themselves. As he climbed higher he found he could look upwards, seemingly unhampered by his spacesuit, and as the summit of the structure grew smoothly and inexorably closer, he felt like a phoenix, rising from the ashes; or like Lazarous.
Finally he stood on a platform that was formed from the shoulder of the giant. Above him the sky brightened and dimmed, and the moon and stars rose and set in the space of a few minutes. Across the wide open spaces of the plane below him he could see the long shadows cast by Millet's Angelus that mingled with the shadows of Dali's elephants, which marched to their mysterious destination and trumpeted to each other. And the voice of Dali himself whispered in the ear of the astronaut with words that veered in and out of definition. "Live, in one dream ..."
He found himself thinking of his family, and feelings of warmth and love overwhelmed him.
And then he heard another, faint voice, so distant it could have traveled across the Universe. It was filled with static and interference, and it broke through into his perception as if leaking through a hole in reality.
Ground control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom ...
And he closed his eyes. "Yes, I can hear you, Ground Control," he whispered in reply, "And I hope you will hear me, in times to come". He smiled faintly, "if memory persists ...
"This is Major Tom, signing out."
Dedicated to Dali and Bowie, all the dream weavers that inspired them, and all those they will inspire.
